A GAP in the fixture schedule has resulted in the expected swirl of transfer gossip and there's one particular piece of chat that has caught my eye.

The rumour mill has it that we are preparing to offer £15 million to lure Connor Wickham from Ipswich.

The 17-year-old hit-man has caught the attention of many a top flight manager this year and he is already being touted as the next big thing.

And big he is, towering over most other outfield players in his division at a statuesque 6ft 3in.

The mind is instantly drawn to Gareth Bale, and his similarly looming presence in our side, not to mention the fact that we nabbed him while he was still in short trousers from a lower-league club and turned him into a match-winning player before his 22nd birthday.

Far be it from me to get my hopes up, but it would be fantastic if we were to nab him.

However I'd like him to feature regularly in the side rather than be farmed out on loan and forgotten about, as I fear may happen with the Kyles and Andros Townsend, to name but a few.

In other news, it looks like Vedran Corluka will return to action within a few weeks despite being completely harvested by Mathieu Flamini in our win over AC Milan on Tuesday (how good is it to read those last six words?).

Our next match is away to Blackpool, which was rescheduled from the great freeze of 2011, and we'll have to stay sharp to avoid an upset against Ian Holloway's men.